“I told thee not! I have been answering thy questions thicker than any blackberries. My tongue fair acheth; I spake not so much this week past.”
“How do you mock me, Father!”
“I will be sad as a dumpling, my lass. I reckon, Mistress, all they shall be sent up to London unto the Council, without there come command that the justices shall deal with them.”
“And what shall be done to them?”
“Marry, an’ I had my way, they should be well whipped all round, and packed off to Spain. Only the galley-slaves, poor lads!—they could not help themselves.”
“Here ’s the leech come, Master,” said Jennet, behind them.
Sir Thomas hastened back into the house, and the two sisters followed more slowly.
“Oh, behold Aunt Rachel!” said Blanche. “She will tell us somewhat.”
Now, only on the previous evening, Rachel had been asserting, in her strongest and sternest manner, that nothing,—no, nothing on earth!—should ever make her harbour a Spaniard. They were one and all “evil companions;” they were wicked Papists; they were perturbators of the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen; hanging was a luxury beyond their deserts. It might therefore have been reasonably expected that Rachel, when called upon to serve one of these very obnoxious persons, would scornfully refuse assistance, and retire to her own chamber in the capacity of an outraged Briton. But Rachel, when she spoke in this way, spoke in the abstract, with a want of realisation. When the objectionable specimen of the obnoxious mass lifted a pair of suffering human eyes to her face, the ice thawed in a surprisingly sudden manner from the surface of her flinty heart, and the set lips relaxed into an astonishingly pitying expression.
Blanche, outwardly decorous, but with her eyes full of mischief, walked up to Rachel, and desired to know how it fared with the Spanish gentleman.